Marketing a home

Sellers often think of open houses as opportunity time. They expose a listing to buyers who might not otherwise see it. At the peak of the housing bubble, this was frequently the case. In many places there was so much demand and so little inventory that sellers could price at or below market price,...

Most people who've bought a house have experienced the Sunday afternoon ritual of piling in the car and making the rounds of open houses. But would you be willing to do it on, say, a Thursday night after work? That's a gamble an increasing number of local real estate agents are willing to make,...

There is a silver lining out there for homeowners who, despite being eager to sell their homes, have opted to sit on the sidelines and wait out the current market's malaise. They've got months, rather than weeks, to ready their houses for listing next year. That's good because there's some work...

Got a house to sell but worry about standing out from the competition? Consider this: A research team at Cornell University has found that people will pay more for a house if its listing price does not end in a bunch of zeros. In other words, the researchers say, you might make more money if you...

Judy Mello wasn't looking forward to buying a new place to live, imagining a lengthy, complicated and perhaps stressful experience. "I figured it was going to drag on for months and months," she says. "But it wasn't like that at all." In fact, it took Mello, a retired registered nurse, a total...

Even as new houses have been steadily increasing in size in recent years, the square footage of yard space surrounding them has continued to decline in many areas. That's good news for some buyers but not for others. "Postage-stamp lots are prevalent in high-cost communities, as well as in difficult-to-build...